


clock's ticking and i'm mortified

by donutworry



Category: The Vampire Diaries & Related Fandoms
Genre: Bonkai Anthology 2019, F/M, Ghost Hitchhiker, Ghost Sex, Urban Legends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-05
Updated: 2019-03-05
Packaged: 2019-11-12 13:11:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18011543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/donutworry/pseuds/donutworry
Summary: Poor guy needed help. Any decent person would have stopped to pick him up.For Bonkai Anthology 2019: Urban Legends. Based on the legend of ghost hitchhikers.





	clock's ticking and i'm mortified

**Author's Note:**

> AN: Title from the song Cave Me In by Gallant, Tablo, and Eric Nam.
> 
> TW: ghost fucking, texting and driving (don’t do it, kiddos), overbearing college frat daddies, and self-important campy horror vibes, so if you’re like “wtf are you doing, bitch?!” that’s why

* * *

 

Rain falls in droves, so dense that Bonnie must slowly navigate the darkened road with her emergency lights on; she can barely see more than a foot in front of her car even with the high beams on and she isn’t taking her chances on someone not seeing her either.

The narrator on her podcast drones on. Admittedly, it was in poor humor that she put on a horror audio drama for her drive to the Tri-Sigma house party from the library. She was already dressed to party, but she was a responsible adult - she’d needed to return the tripod and camera she rented for her Film and Black History class project.

Bonnie sighs about the weather. She prays people turn up. She really didn’t want to be stuck at a lame party on a dark and stormy night with Enzo St John and Damon Salvatore, of all people. Talk about horror.

Damon was the vice president of the Tri-Sigma fraternity, the sibling fraternity to Bonnie’s own Tri-Delta sorority, hence why Bonnie was braving this literal shitstorm instead of cuddling up with her laptop and Limón Hot Cheetos. He had some weird possessive streak towards her, ever since he started dating one of Bonnie’s oldest friends. It was as if he expected to inherit her good will and attention along with Elena’s affections, and it turned Bonnie way off of the older collegiate. 

Just the thought of it now makes Bonnie roll her eyes.

Elena was out of town, taking off early for spring break to return to the small Virginian hometown she and Bonnie shared.

“I just need some space from Damon, Bon,” the pretty brunette had sighed. “I feel suffocated, he’s always around.”

And then she’d gone, leaving Bonnie to choke in her place.

The caramel-skinned girl snorts. That was probably a little more morbid than the situation warranted, but with Elena away, Damon had taken to sticking to Bonnie like white on rice. No wonder Elena had fled. Bonnie couldn’t take a piss without some text from Damon interrupting her urine flow.

A ding from the car speakers interrupts her podcast, letting Bonnie know she had a text message.  _ Speak of the devil _ , the sorority sister thinks,  _ and he shall appear. _

Bonnie taps the  **read** button on the touch screen, listens to the automated voice read Damon’s  _ r u on ur way? _ in the strange way only computers can. She’s relaxed now, driving faster, paying more attention to the annoyance Damon’s text wrought than to where she’s going. Her complacency is why she nearly misses the tall, leonine figure stalking down the road. She would have hit him had her intuition - witch’s twitches, her Grams used to call them - hadn’t screamed at her and her eyes hadn’t shot up, meeting dark eyes in a pale face.

“Fuck!” she shouts, jerking the steering wheel away from the man.

As she struggles to get control of the vehicle before she hydroplaned to her doom, Bonnie couldn’t help but to worry about the young man she almost ran over. She hadn’t hit him, but he seemed to already be hurt. And he was walking in this downpour from hell, and dammit as much as pragmatism tells Bonnie to just go, to call an ambulance or  _ something _ , that Good Samaritan part of her that always got her into more trouble than it didn’t, tells her to help him.

_What if that was you?_ _Or Grams, or Kol?_

Fuck. Against her better judgement, Bonnie, now in control of the car again, swings it in a u-turn and slowly heads back to the area where the young man had been standing when she saw him. 

She almost wonders if she had imagined him or missed him, feeling as though she’d driven too far past where she’d encountered him, when her headlights catch on long, denim-clad legs. It was too dark and too wet to tell, but she thinks he’s limping. One arm hangs almost lifeless, dark hoodie drawn up to offer meager protection from the torrents of rain.

As her lights shine on him, he stops walking, turning to face her again and yep. That’s a  _ huge  _ gash on his forehead, blood being washed down his face from the wound by the rain.

“Fuck,” Bonnie mutters again. She has to help him now. He’d stopped and is staring at her car with his face neutrally blank and unreadable. He’s probably terrified, wondering why the hell the car that had passed him came back.

Rolling down her window just a bit, the petite woman once more internally questions what she’s about to do.

“Hey!” she calls out, doing it anyway. “You need a ride? I’m on my way to my friend’s house, I can take you so you can call the police and get patched up.”

Oh god. It’s out there now. She can’t take that back. Holy fuck. What does she do?

But the tall stranger is nodding and heading her way. Bonnie tells him he can ride shotgun and as he climbs into the passenger seat, she makes a show of responding to Damon’s text through her car’s bluetooth link-up to her phone, dictating aloud that she’s on her way and bringing a guest.

Said ‘guest’ watches her speak in curiosity, staring at the dashboard when it says message sent. He says nothing yet.

“Okay,” she says chipperly, turning to face him. “They’re expect-”

Bonnie cuts herself off, almost unknowingly as she gets caught in the hitchhiker’s gaze. The dark had hid him well. Done him a disservice really.

He was  _ beautiful _ .

He was speaking to her.

“I’m sorry?” Bonnie utters.

“Thank you,” he repeats and his voice is velvet. “You’re the only car that stopped.”

She smiles, uncomfortable with the hero-worship in his expression. “Probably because I’m the only person crazy enough to brace this weather,” she jokes.

The smile falters as he continues to stare at her. It’s unnerving to have someone so good-looking watching you so closely and Bonnie’s hands flutter nervously for a moment, looking for something to do.

“Oh,” she proclaims. “Here.” Opening the middle console, she pulls out a clean towel she saves for moments just like this, when she gets caught in a downpour without any protection. “Put this on your head, try to stop the bleeding.”

She helps him to adjust, telling him to put his seatbelt on and close his eyes so he doesn’t get dizzy.

“Or, wait,” she pauses and the stranger continues to watch her. Bonnie thinks he seems almost amused now. “Don’t close your eyes, you might fall asleep and if you’re concussed that’s probably not a good idea.”

“I might end up a coma patient.”

“Yeah! Maybe. I don’t know, I heard that was a myth, but I think there’s still some reason I’m not medically trained to know why you shouldn’t fall asleep after hitting your head.”

He does grin then, and it’s so boyish and cute, dimples freckling his cheeks and oh god, Bonnie is a sucker for dimples.

Swallowing the lump in her throat and reminding herself that he could be a psycho killer, so she needs to get her hustle on. Bonnie puts the car back in motion, making another careful u-turn and heading to the Tri-Sigma house another mile or so down the road.

“What’s your name?” she asks. Maybe she could keep hot hitchhiker awake with conversation. “I’m Bonnie.”

“Kai,” he says.  _ Well,  _ Bonnie thinks,  _ that’s … interesting. _

“What happened to you, Kai?”

“I lost control of my car on the bridge,” he answers. “It spun out and went over, I barely managed to get out before it crashed.”

Bonnie frowns at that. What bridge? The only one she could think of was Hanover Pass, but that bridge was old and condemned, the road leading to it completely blocked off. A car couldn’t get to the bridge without having a doorbuster attached. Plus a tunnel ran under the river now, so no one ever bothered to try the bridge road. Maybe there was some smaller neighborhood bridge she was unaware of.

“Okay,” she says diplomatically. “Your head must be killing you if you got that jumping out of a moving car.”

He’s concussed, Bonnie reminds herself.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “I’ll be fine.”

 

* * *

 

Arriving at the Tri-Sigma house reveals that yes, people will turn up for the infamous fraternity’s house parties even on a cold, rainy Friday night. Bonnie has to park a few houses down the street, pulling out her big umbrella to walk Kai to their destination.

“This is your friend’s house?” Kai asks. He seems in disdain of the thumping place. She can’t say she disagrees, so Bonnie shrugs and puts the umbrella away, leading him onward towards Kol’s room in hopes of avoiding Damon.

“Bon-bon!”

Internally, Bonnie sighs in resignation. No such luck.

Turning around, she faces Damon with a plastered grin.

“Hey, D.”

“You just get here?” the older student asks, coming to a stop before the newly-arrived pair. His blue eyes trail over Kai’s long form, and Bonnie can see the moment that Damon instantly decides he dislikes him.

“Who’s this?” he asks.

“My guest,” Bonnie sighs back. God, he always made things so difficult.

“I thought you were bringing a hot chick. Or Elena.”

Bonnie frowns at him. “Elena went home?”

What a prick. He really misread her text in the most self-serving way possible. Damon scowls.

“I know that,” he grumbles. He looks like he’s going to say more when Kai suddenly sways, grabbing at Bonnie’s shoulder.

“Whoa,” the stranger interjects. “Sorry. The room started spinning all of a sudden.”

It’s only then that Damon seems to notice the bloody towel pressed to Kai’s forehead. “What happened to you?”

“Damon,” Bonnie huffs. He’s not her boyfriend, she didn’t sign up for his shit. “We’re going.”

“What?” he grabs her arm and irritation flares in Bonnie’s chest. “Where are you going?” he demands, sticking after them. Bonnie has to hold back an eyeroll, opting to yank her arm out of his grasp instead. Ridiculous.

“Kol’s room. He’s got a first-aid kit in his ensuite.”

“How do you know that?” Damon frowns.

“Ask Kol,” Bonnie smiles back at him, weaving herself and Kai through a dense body of beer pong onlookers so that the crowd separates her and Kai from their gracious host. Damon looks on the verge of shoving after them when one of his frat brothers yells about a fraternity antique and he looks away for a second. It’s long enough.

“This way,” she mutters to Kai, and finally manages to get him to the room. She ends what looks like a game of strip poker quickly turning into an orgy, telling them that Kol’s on his way back - anyone that knew the man understood the threat - and locking the door behind them once they leave. Dummies. Kol’s on a Eurotrip.

Kai looks at her expectantly.

“The bathroom,” she says, nodding towards another door and shedding her jacket before following him. Kai’s leaning back on the closed toilet seat, his feet propped on the lip of the bathtub. She thinks about Kol’s reaction to Kai in his space, and can’t decide if the Brit would love or hate the hitchhiker.

Doesn’t matter. She leans over the sink cabinet, pulling out the first-aid kit and setting up what she needs to treat Kai’s head injury. Disinfectant, tweezers, butterfly bandages, gauze, her cell phone to call 911 in case of a concussion-induced craze.

When she turns around to swipe the peroxide soaked cotton ball along his wound, she sees Kai’s eyes dart up to her face almost in time to play innocent. Bonnie can’t help the chuckle that escapes her mouth, and her injured hitchhiker tilts his head in question.

“I just -,” she coughs on another laugh. “I just think it’s funny, is all. Here you are, all banged up and hurt, and definitely with bigger problems to worry about, and you’re still staring at my ass.”

He smiles, chagrined, as she gently pats the peroxide against his head injury and blows softly on the bubbles that oxidize from the blood. She’s impressed that he seems to not notice the pain, staring up at her as she nurses him.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, Bonnie,” he intones. “But I’d have to do more than bust my noggin not to notice how attractive you are.”

The green-eyed woman pauses, looking down at the man. This close, she can barely see the stormy grey-blue of his irises: they’re little more than rings, his pupils blown so wide that the blackness almost eats the color completely. Bonnie swallows the lump that suddenly appears in her throat. She has to remind herself that he’s head-injured.

“I’m sure that’s your concussion talking,” she tries to blow him off.

“That guy, your ‘friend’ right? He’s in love with you.”

Bonnie stares at him in surprise.

“No way.”

“Yeah,” Kai says. “Why do you think he hated me on sight? I’m a competitor for your affections.” He wiggles his eyebrows in a silly way with that last sentence and Bonnie decides then and there that he’ll be fine.

She scoffs. “He’s dating my best friend.”

“Scandalous,” Kai replies. “Doesn’t mean he doesn’t want you.”

Bonnie goes silent as she continues patching him up, contemplating his words. It explains a lot actually. Bonnie shudders. Nope.

“Oh, how did you know about this mysterious ‘Kol’s’ first-aid stash?”

“We used to hook-up,” Bonnie shrugs. Kai seems surprised by her cavelier admittance. “What? It’s 2019. I think we’re living in a progressive enough time that a girl can own all the casual sex she’s had.”

Something twists in Kai’s face then, confusion and sadness and anger all at once. It’s an ugly expression that terrifies Bonnie and she steps back.

“Kai?”

His face clears. “Yeah?”

“You … okay?”

“Yeah, why?”

“You just seemed, er, intense for a moment.”

He smiles.

“Sorry, I just remembered something.”

“Want to talk about it?” Bonnie ventures. Kai shakes his head softly.

“Not really.”

“Okay.”

A silence falls between them, tense but not uncomfortable. Just heavy and loaded with  _ something _ as the two individuals stare at each other. Bonnie leans against the wall opposite of where he’s sitting.

“You think you need to go to the hospital?”

“No.”

“Okay. Do you live around here? I can take you home.”

“I live in Portland.”

Bonnie’s brow furrows. “Why are you in Salem?”

“I came to visit my twin sister, Jo. She goes to Willamette, she’s a public health major,” he grins wide suddenly. Bonnie can sense all his love and pride in the simple expression. “She wants to be a doctor.”

Bonnie smiles. “If she takes all the pre-reqs, passes the MCAT, and has a high GPA, ’m sure some med school will do her the privilege of having her.”

She’s poking fun at the near-inhumane standards and Kai sighs, picking it up. “Yeah.”

“What about you? You go to school?”

Kai shakes his head. “No, I uh - started apprenticing, I guess. To take over the family business.”

“What’s that?”

“Sales.”

“Oh, yeah? Cool.” She smirks slightly at his evasiveness, feeling playful. “What does your family sell?”

“Goods,” Kai nods, catching onto her game. Bonnie snorts.

“Fine, don’t tell me. I only saved your life,” she teases. Kai licks his lips.

“Yeah, about that.” his eyes meet hers, and again his intensity makes Bonnie feel off-kilter. She folds her arms across her chest. “However am I to repay you?”

Bonnie shrugs. “Don’t worry about it, it was the right thing to do.”

Kai moves so quickly that it takes Bonnie by surprise. One moment he’s lounging back and the next he’s looming over her, looking down at her in contemplation.

“C’mon, I’ll feel bad,” his voice has slipped down to low, dulcet tones. If she’d thought it was velvety before, like this …

Bonnie feels something low in her belly stir, clenching in anticipation.

“Don’t worry about it,” she tries to laugh it off, but Kai presses his arms around her, bracketing her form.

“Name one thing,” he tempts and his presumptions irritate her.

“Why? Are you gonna bring my Grams back to life? Pay my tuition? Make my dad stick around long enough to see me and not a reminder of his wife that left him? Reverse my oldest friend’s personality transplant so she’s not a complete bitch anymore? Get her boyfriend to go away and stop stalking me?”

As soon as the anger explodes, it depletes, leaving Bonnie deflated.

“I’m so sorry,” she says. “None of that is - I’m sorry.”

She doesn’t expect the hug. Or the feeling of warmth and safety it brings despite coming from someone she doesn’t know, whose body is still cold and damp from bracing the elements. Not the heat that springs forth when their skin makes contact or the simmering desire that suddenly turns into a raging hellfire of want.

Bonnie kisses him first. That’s all she really remembers before being caught in a tangle of naked limbs, falling across her ex’s bed with another man fucking into her, and every memory around that becomes fragmented, like watching a segmented movie montage.

There’s a memory of asking if he’s okay, of him picking her up, of his sharp teeth on her collarbones, her hips, her thighs, her...oh. His tongue traveling her body and entwining hands. Kai’s mouth is a wicked thing, Bonnie remembers that much.

But these memories aren’t terribly solid. They’re more impressions of wild moment.

She picks up a stranger and takes him home. They have fun. The next morning she wakes up to find him gone.

It’s not a terribly original experience.

But when Bonnie wakes up, it’s because of a scream that rings throughout the entirety of the Tri-Sigma house. In haste, Bonnie is up and dressed, only barely noticing that Kai is missing as she pounds her way down the stairs with several other people, all of them heading to the kitchen where the screaming had come from.

And it’s there, that Bonnie stares in horror at Damon Salvatore’s severed head, his eyes gouged out and shoved into his open mouth. The screaming intensifies.

Bonnie hardly notices that it’s because she had started screaming too.

 

* * *

 

**One Year Later**

There’s no reason for her to be here. She doesn’t owe Damon Salvatore anything, but as the anniversary of his death approaches, Bonnie finds herself more and more anxious to  _ do _ something, to pay her respects in some way. Her therapist calls it survivor’s guilt, but Bonnie thinks it’s guilt of the regular sort.

She’d brought Damon’s murderer to his house after all. If she hadn’t stopped, Damon would be alive. Bonnie is convinced of this wholly.

When Damon died, everyone in the house was questioned. During her questioning, she’d asked about a car in the river and the police officers interrogating her had gone quiet.

“What are you talking about, ma’am?” one of the officers had asked. His badge read Riley and he was tall, handsome, full figured in a way that reminded her of Kai. Bonnie shrunk back from his gaze. 

“I picked up somebody last night. He said the rain made him lose control of his car, that it went off some bridge into the river.”

Officer Riley stared at her. “What was the hitchhiker’s name, Miss Bennett?”

“He said his name was Kai,” Bonnie’s voice cracked. “Oh my god,” she breathed, trying to hold back her tears. “He was gone this morning. I brought him here, I told him Damon irritated me, that I wished he would go away and now Damon’s dead and Kai is  _ gone _ and this is my fault. I brought him here, Damon’s dead and I fucked his killer, this is - ”

She had kept going, she thinks, on some self-flagellating tirade, until Officer Riley had gripped her shoulders and given her small shake. He offered her water.

“Miss, you’re not from around here, are you?” he asked. Bonnie shook her head and he sighed.

“Whoever you brought here with you last night? He’s just some sicko playing a prank on you. Back in 1994, there was a car crash involving a young man named Malachai Parker and his twin sister’s boyfriend at the time. Nobody really knows what happened, it’s suspected they had a fight, but Kai drove his car off of Hanover Pass and the bridge has been condemned ever since. There’s something of a ghost story around these parts now, about a Crossroads Kai, who will grant a wish to whoever picks him up and gives him a ride. It’s not real.”

“What?” Bonnie huffed. “I gave a ghost a ride?”

Officer Riley shook his head and smiled. “No sweetheart, I doubt that. Like I said, probably just some sicko playing a prank on you. You didn’t know the story, so he probably just played along with you instead of dropping the game.”

He moved away and took the glass of water from her.

“You think you can describe him for me? He might be witness.”

Bonnie shook her head. She knew. “He killed Damon.”

“We don’t know that. But we can find out if you describe him.”

She had. She detailed his height, his looks, his clothes.

They never found him.

They never found the killer either.

Now, she leaves flowers before the Tri-Sigma house, one bunch among a hundred others and makes her way back to her car.

It’s her senior year and she can’t wait to graduate and get the hell out of Salem, Oregon.

A light drizzle starts as she heads down the road, the sky growing dimmer as the clouds gather. Even the weather was fitting for such a depressing day.

Her lights come on automatically, lighting the paved road and feeling of dread prickles down Bonnie’s spine. Stupid. How could she forget? This is the road she picked up the so called ‘Crossroads Kai’.

She’d done her own investigating after her questioning. Looked up the accident that caused Hanover Pass to be shut down. Saw the picture of Malachai Parker.

It was him. Kai.

She’d had to rush to the bathroom when she saw the newspaper clipping, before a barely there lunch of coffee and half a sandwich could make it’s fabulous reappearance.

Driving down this road again, exactly one year later, is masochism at its finest. She’s a glutton for punishment, isn’t she?

When she comes upon the area where she had stopped to pick Kai up, she slows to a stop, parking the car and turning the emergency lights on. She stares out at the road for a moment before the tears erupt, sobs wracking her frame.

Never had she felt such an instantaneous draw to someone before. And he wasn’t even human, wasn’t even  _ alive. _

It takes a few minutes for her to get herself together. Bonnie cleans up her smeared make-up, rights herself, and puts the car back into gear.

She checks the rearview mirror for incoming traffic and screams.

“I really appreciate you stopping to pick me up.”

 


End file.
